27 November 2011

A few weeks ago I went to Novi Sad, some 80km north of Belgrade, to play live with Associative (ex Xiqhhyiecryn), Andrei Korre (Nemanja Lazic) and Abadroza, all together under our Àsino Elettronico LIVE label. We've been developing this concept for almost a year now and the basic idea is to present people with something that seems simple and obvious but is apparently lacking nowadays - completely live club performance. No DJ-ing of any sort, just "you, us and the machines", as the poster for the event had already declared.

Each of us would perform separately with his own set of equipment, 50 minutes to one hour on average. If you can read Serbian, I strongly recommend you visit a blog entry by our friend Ves, if you can't read it, at least enjoy her video takes which are (despite all the sound distortion) far more faithful to the energy felt there than our "official" sterile recordings by the club, which are by the way in mono (don't ask me why, I am as puzzled as you might be).

To be honest, by the end of the evening I had thought I screwed up the performance a bit too much and had the feeling my friends were far better in every way. Actually I still feel much of it is true, but according to others it wasn't really like that at all and mistakes weren't as obvious to others as they were to me at the time. Still, performances like that of Associative really gave me the insight of how proper live electronic music in a club should sound and feel:

Which is why I decided to literally scrap everything I did and prepare future performances from ground zero. I've learned that making things sound good in a room only unnecessary complicates the live situation. Many small details are lost anyway and it's really important to keep it simple and straight to the point, lively and intense.

In case you are wondering, I've used the following equipment:
- Korg Kaoss Pad 3 for loop sets
- Korg X3R synth module with Behringer UMX25 for a bit of a keyboard action
- Behringer Xenyx 802 to mix it all together

There was one thing that, apart from musical style itself, separated me from others is the way I had to bridge annoyingly long gaps between tracks. The gaps are due to the loading time on Kaoss Pad, which takes one minute on average - quite too much to leave it in silence. So the only plausible solution was to playback prepared ambiental passages from an mp3 player. It did fit well but in effect it would cool down any excitement in crowd each and every time.

This shouldn't be a problem anymore since a new concept is on it's way (and one crucial new piece of equipment is already here ;). Quite possibly a new name also, for a sound that should be quite different.